I don't think you get it. I LOVE being a thief/assassin and it's what I'm going for but it's incredibly easy to level up and make a lot of money so why would I be a thief in the end? I don't have to do it for the gold because I got loads and pickpocketing is so easy that half an hour of it, gives you a ton of jewelry, arrows, gold, etc. I have a 90% chance to steal a SHIELD

Heck, I don't want to be level 20 already - I only visited 5 places out of hundreds! And no-one seems to know how the auto-levelling works so I'm worried I'm going to be skipping certain content (like particular enemies and such) by suddenly being 15 levels higher since I entered the city.

In the end, I think the problem is that pickpocketing raises too fast and makes levelling go up far too fast as well.

Oh, I probably really don't get it then, sorry about that :D ... Still ... YOU HAVE PICKPOCKETED A SHIELD!? How on earth does someone NOT notice missing a shield??? And how is it PICKING A POCKET?? All right, I'm beginning to appreciate the flawed system of Morrowind :D

Well, Skyrim will last you longer and costs more so if you can get that then go for it. Then get The Witcher 2 later. :)

Well I can also pick pocket EQUIPPED swords - how on earth do you not notice that? It's funny in combat to rob them off their weapons though but it raises some questions about testing if you raise your skill so fast to a level where it's extremely powerful. I'm at 92 now out of 100 and at 100 I can even steal equipped items, not just weapons, meaning armour, clothing, rings, etc. I gather ...

Worse yet, stripping people of everything is not an oversight it's actually a perk in the skill tree.

Just to make a note: there definitely IS levelling going on. I was level 23 by the time I got pickpocketing to the max of 100 and all my other skills were still pretty low with the exception of lockpicking (31) so I was not prepared for combat. I went to Rifter to join the thieves guild and got my ass handed to me several times by simple thugs who weren't even wearing anything (I had pickpocketed the clothes from their asses). So I decided that, since the game was unbalanced, I'd have to take a step myself and used the following "cheat":

player.setlevel 12

I basically reduced my character level to one where I thought it would be more fair considering I had levelled from not doing ANY combat skills. A big mistake of the game if you ask me - sure, stealth is handy in combat, but my stealth was just 22 so no way I could pickpocket my enemies using stealth unless I got very lucky. In other words, I was a "noob" in starters gear confronting with enemies with far better gear, weapons, skills than me. And now the game is fair again and I can start levelling my combat (archery, light armor, stealth) skill without suddenly being level 35 :p.

Oh, and another cheat I always use in Oblivion/Fallout3/Skyrim:

player.modav carryweight 1000

I simply don't agree with being punished for collecting food & ingredients for all the crafting. Leather weighs a TON and I constantly had to go store my ingredients which meant that there was way too much running back and forward. I'll leave that to MMOs, thankyouverymuch, so I increased the maximum amount of stuff I can carry but roughly 250%. Now I can carry more than a few magic weapons as loot and don't have to run back and forward after every dungeon either (important when you consider areas reset after a few days too).

Maybe its because he is intelligent enough to see the intense fanboyism going on in the forums of a website owned by the people who made The Witcher series.

Seriously... half of the reason people are telling him not to buy the game doesn't even have to do with the game itself... it has to do with a stupid lawsuit. Then the other half is basically saying "wait for GOTY"... which yes is inevitable.... but that doesn't mean that you SHOULD have to wait for it. If everybody waited like they urge others to do almost constantly, then it goes without saying that there is probably not going to be a GOTY edition.

Fact is that Skyrim VANILLA has more content & things to do than PATCHED Witcher II for almost the same money.

They are both great games but I've been having much more fun with Skyrim. But Skyrim does need some more patches. Nothing game breaking so far but it has crashed to desktop a few times for me and there are parts of a certain quest line that freeze the game. I did get around them without having to use the console however.

Oh what do you still have with the fanboyism? I know of far too many people who never heard of GoG and only know that CD-Project used to be some sort of distributor in Czech Republic AND think the Witcher is the best thing of the past decade. You played 30 minutes of it, who on earth are you to judge?

I for one am a huge fan of both TES series (while I haven't played Skyrim, I sure as hell can say it's going to be an amazing game and I know Bethseda's style well enough to give advice), and a huge fan of The Witcher - and yet if I never played any of the two, Witcher would be the way to go for me.

BTW now that you reinstalled the game from 2.0 GOG scratch, what languages are there? Voice and text ?

Text: EN, DE, ES, FR, IT
voice-over: DE, EN, FR

Heeey, where did Czech subtitles go!? My wife wanted to play it!

That is what I thought. Pretty strange, but they can be added by installing CZ patch 2.0 over the game (eventhough it is already patched). Or you can simply get the CZ string file somewhere and put it into install folder. But why is it not there by default, when all previous patches contained it...is a mystery.

Well besides a person who played 30 minutes of a game that bored him to tears... not really anybody in the greater scheme of thing I suppose. All I'm saying is that there is a lot of the proverbial cock stroking of CD Projekt around here more or less simply because they own GOG. You act as if I am being a hypocrite by condemning the fanboyism of people who know full well that the site is owned by them while stroking off the Elder Scrolls myself... & thats simply not true. At one point I liked the series yes... I put over 200 hours into Oblivion when I was younger (& actually had more time for that sort of thing), but nowadays it is quite the opposite. The series bores me to tears as well (this is however more than likely a side effect of spending so much time in the Morrowind *which I never beat* & Oblivion)... that being said I think I am somewhat qualified to speak on this. From what I have gathered the average amount of playtime that people have clocked into The Witcher II is 30 hours. Supposedly there are two different paths... so I'll give you another 30 just for the hell of it (even though I honestly doubt that it would take another full 30 for a second playthrough considering you would know the world, mechanics & objectives much better on a second playthrough).... 60 vs. 200. You do the math. Which is a better value for your buck? Now factor in that Skyrim is actually LONGER & takes place in a larger world than Oblivion. Okay now also factor in that it features a system for unlimited & differentiating side quests based on how you behave within the world & the fact that it inevitably will have DLC expansions as well. 60 vs. Literally Unlimited Playtime. Once again.... which is the better value?
Well I'm sure that 95 for PC, 95 for PS3 & 96 for 360 on Metacritic mean absolutely nothing then.

it doesn't

like it doesn't mean that bieber is the greatest young singer out there because he gets awards and sells millions of copies.

and if you believe metacritic is any indicator of quality then i really don't need to bother with you.